Monday, April 23, 2012

I came across an interesting if not controversial topic on the ASMR forum a while back, and I’ve since seen it crop up on the Facebook group and Reddit among other places. I think it deserves some attention: is there such a thing as a negative or an “anti-ASMR”?

As has been suggested, there’s nothing in the acronym (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) that suggests that ASMR is accompanied only by positive sensations. Some claim to have had experiences where ASMR was so intense that it actually felt bad; it hurt. Most experiencers out there will tell you that their personal experiences with ASMR have been pleasurable, but there’s a small but seemingly growing number of contributors to the theory that there may well exist a negative form of ASMR, or who consider ASMR to be wholly negative as far as their personal experiences with it go.

I’ve even come across comments where some people surprisingly dislike possessing ASMR, maybe because it is painful or annoying. Some go as far as labelling it as a disease.

So I thought it would be interesting to present this to the community and see what all of you think.

And the options for the poll are:

a) ASMR is accompanied by positive sensations and emotions only – you completely discount the theory that a negative or anti-ASMR exists. You also might think that people who claim it does exist are referring to an entirely different condition or phenomenon instead of ASMR.

b) ASMR is wholly negative in the sensations and emotions it produces – at least for you, you experience nothing positive from ASMR at all. Note that this refers to the physical and emotional products of ASMR that you experience personally.

c) There is a positive and a negative form of ASMR – you have either personally experienced both positive and negative forms of ASMR, or you accept that it may well be a possibility for an anti-ASMR to exist.

So that’s it. You all have 90 days (approximately 3 months) to vote. The poll is on the sidebar to the right, a little ways down. Happy voting!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Well, it’s that time again. The poll I ran for 3 months is now closed. The question posed to you all was “can you learn to experience ASMR?”. There were three possible answers: “Yes, it’s possible to initially not possess it, and develop ASMR”; “Everyone has it. It’s therefore only possible to realise that one has it”; and “It’s not possible. You’re either born with it or you aren’t”.

In total there were 46 votes. The least amount of votes, 7 (15%), went to option A, saying that it’s possible to develop ASMR even if one doesn’t initially have it. The second highest number of votes, 17 (36%), went to option B, saying that everybody possesses ASMR and we all either realise we have it as a naturally occurring bodily function of sorts, or we don’t realise it. The latter would essentially be non-experiencers. And the highest number of votes, 22 (47%), goes to option C, where voters believe that it’s not possible to develop ASMR at any point in life after birth. You either have it or you don’t.

So option B and C’s results were rather close, suggesting that maybe we’re beginning to see after time that more people have this than we thought, and maybe it isn’t so rare. Maybe it isn’t rare at all, and indeed is possessed by most, if not all people.

Monday, April 9, 2012

First off, happy International ASMR Day! It’s become the norm to drop the “international” bit seeing as this is a given – experiencers live all around the world!

ASMR Day began on Monday, April 9, 2012 at 12:00 AM GMT, and will continue on until 12:00 AM on Tuesday, April 10, 2012. The time differences hindered the ASMR Radio part of the event a bit, which had its first official broadcast to tie in with the event. There were also some technical issues on the main site as well as some difficulties experienced by people trying to listen in live (browser complications, etc.). Despite this, at one point, according to the ASMR Radio Facebook group, reportedly 200 people were able to tune in via the streaming service on the main website and iTunes, so that’s quite remarkable actually!

For those who missed the live broadcast, I’ve learned that podcasts will be made available for you over at IlseTheWaterdrops’s YouTube channel. Some are still holding out for downloadable mp3s which can even be played while offline as we all know, but the availability of these in future has yet to be confirmed.

Nevertheless, once again, happy ASMR Day, and thanks to all who were involved by either joining the event, participating on any of the Facebook groups we have and discussing it, and not to mention those who organised the event and the Radio broadcast. I’m sure we’ll all look forward to seeing more live broadcasts in future!

Site Updates

These are just mini-updates that I was too lazy or busy to make a post for. They also list changes or additions that have been made to the blog, for interest's sake and to follow how the blog is developing.